This past week I took a trip to Toronto via Cleveland (long story) to attend the Urban Forests, Political Ecologies Conference (which was a truly fantastic conference). In addition to seeing the Cuyahoga River for the first time (a river that makes its way into every intro to environmental law course), I got to
drive through the city of Euclid, Ohio. I felt as if I was living in a case book! Euclid, as many of you know, became famous in the case of Euclid vs. Ambler Realty, where the Supreme Court, for the first time, upheld a municipality's authority to enact zoning regulations. These regulations were ultimately an exercise of the police power intended to preempt nuisance claims by separating well-recognized nuisances (like industry) from those who might bring claims. Well, as I traveled down the main drag back toward the interstate, what filled the windshield of my car but one of the largest windmills in North America. That's right, Euclid was at it again. Innovating. From the same grid upon which modern zoning was built, you could now view a growing source of alternative energy in the U.S. I snapped a picture, shown to the right, and as you can see this is no slight change to the Euclid skyline (it appears, however, that Euclid has not mandated underground powerlines through its zoning power).

The mayor of Euclid hopes this is the beginning of Euclid's renewable energy revolution, and Euclid has indeed followed up by placing solar panels on city buildings. The turbine is poised over Lincoln Electric's headquarters and is expected to cut a half a million dollars from Lincoln's annual electric bill. Of course, just as with complaints about zoning regulations in 1926, the city has received complaints about the turbine obscuring views of Lake Erie. But overall, residents seem quite happy with the attention the windmill brings, and with the potential for future investment in windmill manufacturing for a region in great need of re-investment in growth industries.

Of course, the case of the city of Euclid provides an interesting metaphor for the broader intersection between zoning and renewable energy. As Professor Troy Rule has explored in many fine articles, municipalities may often use zoning authority to keep renewable energy projects out of their municipal limits. In this way, the city of Euclid provides a wonderful example of a city embracing such projects - and not just a project on the fringe of the city limits, but one that can be seen from pretty much any street in downtown. Hopefully more municipalities will embrace Euclid's vision of what is not a nuisance in a time when renewable energy is in need of major adoption across the 88,000 or so subnational governments across the nation. And maybe they can do something about those powerlines too.